“It feels like a second home,” said 18-year old violinist Jessica Kartwaidjaja, from Jakarta, Indonesia, with a smile, “like a big family, including the staff and faculty.” She was referring to Chamber Music Northwest’s annual Young Artist Institute (YAI), a special three-week summer program for a select group of young, ultra-talented string players. We are talking about 16 teenagers, age 14 to 18 years old, who can play the daylights out of technically challenging numbers by Beethoven, Brahms, Kodály, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, and company. YAI gives them an opportunity to work with top-notch teachers to hone their skills in chamber music. 

“The Young Artist Institute is a very special, concentrated program,” said violinist Jessica Lee, YAI faculty member.  “You get to develop this relationship and see the back and forth from day to day. You can see the students develop. It happens right away. A concept will congeal. It awakens in their brains. You can see it. Then you get to water it and watch things grow! The program is very wonderful in that way because it is so intense.”

Lee knows a thing or two about teaching. She has taught violin at Vassar and Oberlin, and will be leaving her position as associate concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra to become the chair of the violin faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music. At a fundraising gala for the YAI, Lee told CMNW patrons how the CMNW program is a highlight that she looks forward to every year.

“The YAI offers a wonderful multi-dimensional learning experience,” explained Lee. There is chamber music coaching every day, accompanied with a lot of rehearsal time. “About once a week we have a chamber studio class where each group would perform for all of the students and faculty.,” she explains. “We talk it over in front of the whole group and exchange ideas. It is a great way to have an interactive discussion and open their minds to something outside the practice room. Then they performed in front of audiences at pop-up concerts and other recital opportunities.”

“We work on bow technique a lot,” said cello instructor Peter Stumpf, a faculty member from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He was formerly the principal cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and prior to that the associate principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra. “We learn how to bow in an effective way,” added Stumpf. “How the string and bow interact. It’s a complicated motion that can take many years to make it more natural.”

Founded in 2022 by CMNW’s co-artistic directors, Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim, the YAI has four faculty members: violinists Lee and Kim, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Stumpf.  They teach sixteen students (eight violinists, four violists, and four cellists), which translates into four string quartets, but this year one of the cellists had to withdraw from the program because of an injury.

Augmenting YAI are two pianists who provide accompaniment as needed for concertos, sonatas, and other chamber works. This time around, the pianists are Yandi Chen and Paulina Lim Mei En. Both are young professionals pursing advanced degrees at the New England Conservatory. 

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Participants are selected by Kim and faculty members. Because of strong support from CMNW patrons and grants from foundations, the students received scholarships that covered the cost of the program.  That included teenagers (ages 14 to 18) from Spain, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United States. From June 15 to July 6, they resided and rehearsed at the University of Portland campus. 

All of the participants were assigned pieces to learn before coming to YAI. During the program, they gave performances in pop-up concerts at museums, bookstores, farmers markets, colleges, The Old Church, cultural centers, city parks, and retirement homes, sometimes using the new mobile stage provided by SoundsTruck NW. 

The gala concert on June 23 teased a full house at The Redd on Salmon Street with an enticing program that showed off the students in a variety of ensembles. An all-cello ensemble (Stumpf; Caleb Sharp, 16, from Wilton, CT; Charles Lee, 16, from Bellevue, WA; and Caitlin Enright, 16, from Chatham, NJ) delivered a crisp arrangement of the Overture from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. That was followed by Brahms’ Geistliches Wiegenlied in a lovely arrangement for viola quintet (Cords; Rebekah Sung, 16, from Fremont, CA; Henry Woodruff, 16, from Solvang, CA); Michelle Koo, 18, from Palo Alto, CA; and Ella Eunsuh Park, 16, from Chicago, IL).  

Next came the first movement from Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor that received a wonderful performance by a larger ensemble (violinists Kartawidjaja; Christy Kim, 18, from Mason, OH; Kailey Yun, 17, from Tustin, CA;  Hiro Yoshimura, 18, from Cupertino, CA; Jiyu Oh, 18, from Seoul, South Korea; Inés Maro Burgos Babakhanian, 14, from Madrid, Spain; Katie Liu, 16, from Portland, OR; Tokuji Miyasaka, 17, from Pullman, WA; and faculty members cellist Stumpf, bassist Nina Bernat, and continuo-keyboardist Chen. The concert finished up with a full-bodied rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings that involved all of the students and faculty. 

Two weeks later the students gave their final performance (July 6) at Kaul Auditorium, forming four different ensembles in a program that mixed demanding selections from the Romantic repertoire with challenging new pieces from composers who have participated in the Fear No Music’s Young Composers Project, a composition training and mentorship endeavor. Each YCP piece was a world premiere, which added to the freshness of the concert.

The Spirit Quartet (violinists Katie Liu and Inés Maro Burgos Babakhanian, violist Rebekah Sun, and cellist Charles Lee) kicked things off with polished interpretations of the first movements of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4 and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1. They also excelled with C. A. Martin’s Waterway, a slow moving, shape shifting, delicate piece with extended glissandos and tremolos. 

The first movements from Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 6 and Brahms’ String Quartet No. 1 received sublime performances by the Good Question Quartet (violinists Tokuji Miyasaka and Jessica Kartawidjaja, violist Michelle Koo, and cellist Calib Sharp). For Koharu Sakiymas’s Five Tastes, the ensemble evoked the sensations of Sour, Bitter, Umami, Salty, and Sweet with gusto. 

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After intermission a quartet consisting of violinists Christy Kim and Jiju Oh, violist Ella Eunshuh Park, and YAI resident mentor J. Alexander Smith created the intoxicatingly mysterious atmosphere Frazar Henry’s Sotto Voce. That was followed by Kodály’s Serenade, Op. 12 for Two Violins and Viola, with its energetic third movement that swept the audience off its feet. 

The Big Lebowski Quartet (violinists Hiro Yoshimura and Kailey Yun, violist Henry Woodruff, and cellist Caitlin Enright) elicited the sensitive flow of Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 10, and delved into Caleb Palka’s Aortal Light with fierce intensity, although the extended pitches sounded painful. The tension of that piece was released with gleeful abandon in the quartet’s playing of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 9. The super-fast tempo could have easily spun out of control, but the quartet miraculously kept it together and delivered a knockout punch to the delight of the audience. 

After the concert, with the pressure off, the students lined up for photos of the entire group together on the stage. The glow of infectious glee took over, and it was great to see the kids cutting loose. The comradery was palpable. 

“It doesn’t have a big division like where students are scared of the teachers or where the staff are controlling us,” noted Kartwaidjaja. “We are all friends.”

“We talk about the music that we are performing,” said Katie Liu. “Everyone has different opinions about the music. In chamber music we have to come together with one idea. It’s a collaboration.

Many of the young musicians will go on to other summer programs. Liu, who is one of the concertmasters of the Portland Youth Philharmonic will be attending the National Youth Orchestra of the United States, which will perform at Carnegie Hall and tour South America.

“At orchestra camp there’s a hundred people,” added Michelle Koo.  It’s like a speed matchup to get to know others. But at YAI, you get a personal experience and that can make all the difference.”

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